As parents, we struggle so mightily to shield our children from the excruciating pain of grief that we sometimes forget what might be best for them. If only we can control our own anxiety and desire to make it all better long enough to pause and listen, we might hear our children telling us what they need. Children, in their simplicity, can have clarity about death and how to appropriately honor a passing. They are not weighed down as we are with complexity and complication surrounding an adult’s understanding of death.

Anxiety, fears and worries escalate in all times of loss for kids, not just in grief over death. Loss, change, and grief can cause upheaval that can cause children to regress to behaviors they have outgrown or that are more commonly seen in younger children. Children who were easy to potty train and mastered independent toileting may begin bed-wetting. You may notice sleep difficulties, nightmares, or a fear of the dark. In school, students may have difficulty concentrating, may easily lose focus, or may develop academic troubles. This aspect of child grieving – the anxiety and fear- can be the most trying for parents to watch their child struggle with. Our hearts break for them, and we may even feel frustrated or overwhelmed. Here are some tips for dealing with your child’s anxiety following a loss.

In times of loss or change, rituals can be comforting to all of us, but especially for children. Yet it is precisely at times of loss and change that rituals are often abandoned—adults become too swamped with managing the accompanying chaos of change that they fail to attend to rituals that could bring peace and grounding. Indeed, rituals take time and forethought and energy, commodities that grow scarce during crisis. It can feel overwhelming to add “orchestrating a ritual” to your to-do’s in challenging times. But I encourage you, for the sake of your children, to consider it.

Funerals are but one of many ceremonies our society has created to honor life’s passages. We don’t think twice about including our children in other important ceremonies, from birthdays to weddings to anniversaries. In many such celebratory events we even give children an important and central role to play. Why not funerals?

Headline events such as weddings and funerals create an obvious need for a ceremony, but there are plenty of other opportunities in children’s lives that call for rituals like moving to a new house, ending a school year, giving up a pacifier or becoming a big brother or sister.

As any parent can tell you, these times of change can be challenging, frustrating, confusing and sometimes even scary for kids (not to mention the adults who love them). Even when a change is due to a positive milestone or ultimately good for a child’s development, children may experience the change as a loss of what had been. This is because all of these events threaten the child’s status quo and can throw a family’s balance out of whack, making rituals especially important.